The Importance of Receipt Pronunciation

There is no such thing as a single, universally used, educated accent. English accents are now much more mixed than they ever have been in the history of the English language. It isn't any longer possible really to condemn an accent simply on the grounds that it doesn't match up to traditional standards you associate with receipt pronunciation. You have to treat it in its own terms as an index of local identity so long as it doesn't interfere with the need for mutual intelligibility.